Grist (sic) for the Mill

[ecosophia]

Rejection slips are among the enduring features of any writer's life. In fact, I fielded one yesterday. It was from Grist, a glossy pseudoenvironmental rag that caters to the overprivileged, and it was in response to the story I submitted to their "cli-fi" contest back in March. 

Mind you, this came as less than no surprise. I discussed the contest, among other signposts in the strange landscape of thought we've entered in the last few years, in a post over on my blog.  My comments on it were, ahem, far from sympathetic, and the story I submitted to the contest -- "A Modest Contribution" -- was of a piece with that:  I set out to follow the rules of their contest to the letter, while flatly contradicting the spirit thereof. I was a little sorry to get a bland generic rejection slip instead of a scream of outrage, but then one can't be too picky in this business. 

Over on the blog, however, I heard from another reader who'd submitted something in the same spirit and also got a rejection slip.  It occurs to me to wonder aloud just how many readers were as unimpressed by Grist's display of overinflated entitlement as I was, and reacted to it in the same way, by writing a story. If there are enough of us, you know, it might be possible to produce a short book -- or even a not so short book! -- and get it into publication. (And I might be convinced to invite new stories along the same lines, for that matter; you can read Grist's bellowing orgy of virtue signaling disguised as a call for submissions here if you happen to need inspiration.) 

What say you, fellow writers?  Do we have enough stories, in the jargon of a vanished age, to pub an ish? 

Comments

[deborah_bender]

I've read that the invented plural "latines" is gaining some favor, as it is pronounceable and has some existing parallel constructions in Spanish.

[(Anonymous)]

It makes more sense than Latinx, that’s for sure, but it still doesn’t follow Spanish grammar, which defaults to the masculine much more than English does. Say there are 19 women and 1 man on a bus. In English, they’re “the passengers,” and unless we peek in the windows while the bus is stopped we have no way of knowing their sex, and English doesn’t care. Spanish cares. Spanish cares a whole lot. They are “los pasajeros,” masculine, until we get a look at them, and in this case they are still los pasajeros as long as that one guy’s riding. Not till he gets off do the remaining passengers become “las pasajeras,” feminine.

And from the perspective of feminism, this should all be irrelevant. Turkish lacks cases. Russian has gendered verbs (that point in the textbook was when my brother gave up his long-ago study of the language). Who more closely matches the western idea of liberation, Turkish women or Russian women?

Harrumph.

—Lady Cutekitten

[open_space]

The "inclusive" language trend of replacing "a" and "o" for an "e" made some headlines a few weeks ago. Someone pointed out in response that if you try to use it for the feminine "señoras" you end up with "señores" which is the masculine and I found it hilarious.

[(Anonymous)]

I like to point out that the Spanish language clearly prefers women. They get to be both "pasajeros" and "pasajeras" depending on the context. They get a special bonus word! More opportunity!

OTOH, a language that favored men would surely reserve that special status for the masculine. Right? ;)

[tolkienguy]

Actually, the funniest example here is Persian-a language that has no grammatical gender whatsoever, to the point of having one word, "oo", for both "he" and "she". If I say "oo-raa dar ootooboos deedam", (I saw him/her on the bus), you have no way of knowing whether I saw Ali or Fatima unless I give names.

As you might have guessed from my choice of examples, Persian is a Middle Eastern language-specifically, the national language of Iran and one of the two national languages of Afghanistan. Somehow, I doubt either country is what Western feminists have in mind when they imagine a women's paradise!